Saturday, 5 September 2009

BEWARE: Bashing the blundering Barroso because of his blatant behaviour is bogus, yet biased backtalk builds up the brilliant and bright but bruised brains of those baffled backbenchers broadly betoken "bloggers"!As you can see from the opening alliteration, this "Europe in blogs - Euroblogs" is something special, dedicated to a marvellous mind who - as I have reported - is begging on 40+ pages to get re-elected by the European Parliament.

And although some are already looking beyond Barroso's re-election and towards the other new Commissioners, like Marko from an Estonian perspective or Jan and Jon, who summarise the speculations about who will remain or become EU Commissioner in the next term, let's take a look at what the blogosphere has to say about JMB and his ambitious programme:

In a more reflected note, Renaldas sees the presentation of the Barroso programme as an important precedent in the history of the European Parliament, showing the increased confidence of the Parliament. In a less reflected note, Gawain shares his visualised thoughts on the content of Barroso's presentation.

For Rafael, Barroso is suffering from what he calls the Napoleon syndrom, searching for eternal power, while for MEP James Elles the 40 pages document is written from a worm's perspective.

For now and forever, this image of a worm with Barroso's face wearing a tricorn will stay in my brain...

But looking at this Napoleonic worm in the EU Zoo, it seems like the economic proposals coming from Barroso are nothing but old wine in new bottles - yet, if the old wine is the only wine, then it is still the best wine as MEP Katrin Saks concludes.

However, using old wine to get re-elected in September will make the manoeuvre difficult (but not impossible), says Durarte, while The Croydonian feels that the style of Barroso's prose leaves a great deal to be desired, maybe because he drinks too much.

In a more sober style, Stefano writes an open letter to Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt asking not to re-elect Barroso, but the Swedish minister for European affairs answers with "NO!", because she thinks that Barroso's programme is long but easy to agree on.

Now I was thinking about how to link from prose and style to content, but thankfully Finnegan counted Barroso's buzzwords, and Mathew presented them in a more stylish way, so that I don't have to invent a bridge on my own. What we learn from what both guys did: You need computer programs to understand Barroso.

This opinion is definitely shared by the people at Google where they also count words to find that Barroso has no idea about innovation. And Jean would have probably been very happy if innovation was the only blind spot of Barroso, not accompanied by 100 other failures that he lists in the latest post of his series "Campaign Journalism in the 21st Century".

When it comes to content, Judith is convinced that Barroso is too vague on climate issues. But why care about content, if one finds, like Conor, that there is not much content at all?

Finally, thinking about the consequences of the non-election of Barroso, Anna reminds that without a strong Commission president, the EU would be weakened at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, while for Stefan Barroso was anyway a weak president - so we will be weak in any case...

And before finishing: If you want a more eloquent "Europe in blogs" on the Barroso story - especially one in a much more beautiful language - I recommend the latest "L'Europe en blogs" where you will learn that Jesus returns!

That's it for now; "Europe in blogs - Euroblogs" will return soon with an objective and unbiased look at Europe and the European blogosphere.

PS.: I would have liked to link much more blog posts, but nobody cares about Barroso out there. This is all I found - if you found more, tell me!

Barroso is an empty shell: that's why his "manifesto" is so easily put into practice. He hasn't a real idea in his head: he is, as usual, waiting for his lords and masters (male or female) to show their hand: then he will have a plan - remarkably like theirs. And, whatever the views of individual Commissioners, or especially those of the Parliament, he will over-ride them. To satisfy his lords and masters. As he has done throughout his last term in office.

For some of these I used Google Blogsearch and Icerocket - don't have time to follow Lithuanian and Portuguese blogs on a regular basis. :-)

And regarding Barroso: I think it is both his fault and the fault of the system. The system favours persons like him, rather consensual, not too visible. So he is in this position because he is as he is. This is not his fault.

But he also didn't manage to fill the position with life - if you asked somebody outside Brussels to tell what he stands for, what he has done, how he would be characterised, there would be no answer. The Union needs a person that is clearly identified with this Union, and sadly JMB is not this person.

But aren't you essentially saying that it is the system, then, because it's the system that resulted in him being chosen?

You can't really blame Barroso for being what he is. The EU selects the Commission head that the Member States can can agree on, which is not necessarily the Commission head the EU actually needs.

Biologists would probably refer to this as 'suicidal self-selection', if this sort of phenomenon ever appeared in the natural world (which it wouldn't, for long).

PS I'd love to see you set out the tools you use on my toolkit survey. Not just due to idle curiosity - if enough of us use the same tools, some interesting crowdsourcing possibilities may emerge, because of these tools' social dimension.

I have to blame him. Because if I don't blame him, I am not expressing neither to the member states nor the EU institutions what I actually want, what I think would be important for the Union. And I blame Barroso because if he really would love the Union, live for the Union of the citizens, he would be different. But he isn't.

Regarding the tools: It's very simple - as a blogger I use blogs via a very simple Mac RSS-reader and I use Twitter via Nambu. Everything else (email, facebook, skype etc.) just when absolutely needed. I try to limit the platforms I use because switching takes to much time. I like to filter a lot of content, very selectively, but still a lot. But I hate going from A to B for that.